Nikolay was round with his letter at 8.00am. I told him I was happy to act as his courier to London, but only when his letters were ready in future. He was peeved.
I then went to meet the Head of the Non-Governmental Organisations’ Section at the huge Ministry of Foreign Affairs building at Smolenskaya-Sennaya Square. It used to be called “Dom Gromyko” – “Gromyko’s House”. When I went in the policeman clapped his hands and a young man in a checked jacket appeared across the hall to take me upstairs. He was Pavel Karpov, assistant to Alexander Gorelik, and both were intelligent and quiet. They were discussing the possibilities for registering Amnesty, but I think just wanted the opportunity to size up the beast. At the end Gorelik slipped in, “and naturally you are researching violations here…”, and I explained not, quite firmly.
Another visit to the WPA Review Committee in the Cosmos Hotel. Svetlana Polubinskaya hallooed me in the lobby and was very funny talking about the progress of the draft Law on Psychiatry. I said she should write a play about it. She said she would write a mystery story: why someone official could look her in the eye and say some instructions did not exist, while she’d had copies of them in her bag for months. I like her. One of the Americans there asked me how long I’d been at Amnesty, because my English was really very good. I think she was a bit confused.
I had a nice impromptu evening at the Teplitskys’. They said the floor of Chyromushinsky Market was a sea of tomatoes, strawberries and cherries today. Taxi drivers from Kursk station had come to claim their pay-off and roughed up the stalls.
This afternoon a drunkish man tried to kick me in the street. I got out of his way, then watched him. He avoided a man, then bore straight onto the next woman, who ran away frightened. My first thought was, That’s very Western behaviour. I wonder why I should think that? Except that you do see a generalised hostility to women in films and street gangs there, that you don’t see here.
Friday 14 June
After an immensely tiring and boring day stuffing envelopes, I asked Irina what she thought of the book I’d lent her about a woman who was cured of cancer by diet therapy. She said such an enormous will to live was a little bit difficult for a Soviet person to understand.
Saturday 15 June
A day I reclaimed for myself and not a moment too soon. It was another day of cold driving rain, interspersed with hot bright stretches and blue skies. I really enjoyed the morning, listening to Grace Jones and reading the Manchester Guardian Weekly. I’d no idea the Queen had been to the USA or that Angus Wilson and Coral Browne had died.
I went into town, bought a book and had some photos taken at the Instant Photo shop – instant meaning ready by Monday lunchtime. You go into a backroom hung with posters of Alla Pugacheva and nymphs with wet clinging T-shirts, and a middle-aged woman with an apron and wooden camera tripod sizes you up and shifts the tripod around depending what size photo you want. She stomped up to me and silently yanked my head around until it was straight.
The hefty cashier in the milk shop was sitting in her vest, applying make-up into her compact. A drunk had missed the bench outside my back window and was lying flat on his back on the ground with his arms outstretched. The local grocery shop, the size of the average Spar, has been totally empty for the first five months of my stay here. Now they’ve closed off most of it and opened two stalls selling cigarettes, sausage and cake – less than you’d see at an average boy scout sale. The woman rummages in a big cardboard box to get you your change.
I had dinner at Hella and Siffra’s and we watched a video of John Mortimer’s Summer’s Lease. They said I look exhausted, but they do too. They intend to cut short their three-year contract unless they begin to enjoy life here more. I find things are always interesting, but I am not enjoying myself either. Like me, Siffra has started smoking. She had been to Novokuznetsk, where not only has the hot water stopped, but public transport too, so people are walking everywhere. If that happens in Moscow I really will give up.
Sunday 16 June
There was a pool of blood where the drunk lay yesterday. At about 10.00am a troupe of people singing to an accordion went through the courtyard, the men in wigs and skirts and women in aprons. People were sitting out with their carpets draped over the children’s climbing frames. A man stripped to the waist was silently swinging over and over on the parallel bars outside my window.
I shopped in the Danilov Market and bought a chicken, cheese, cherries, strawberries and herbs.
I had the chance to do some thinking today and achieved some peace of mind. It is very enjoyable and therapeutic to sound off as I did last night with Hella and Siffra, but it is also easy to overwhelm yourself with the enormous odds. I think I will feel better if I only think about the things which present themselves each day, and include my own enjoyment in that. Things are basically moving in the right direction and each day tends to be very different and unpredictable. Unlike journalists here, I think, I do have a defined purpose and there is satisfaction in unravelling the whole complicated issue. I should also remember that the responsibility is not all mine, although that is harder to believe.
Life here is like an elaborate Outward Bound course, with half the participants asking me to help them. I’ve never liked Outward Bound courses, but for that reason I should try to relax more about it. For the people who live here, it is deadly serious.
Monday 17 June
I went back on the premises trail. Starovoytova had done her stuff and an “order” was waiting for me at the Privatisation Commission. I queued for ninety minutes to pick it up. We were all getting very tense as the lunch hour approached and the office would shut up shop. I just made it in, and a charming woman with a nice smile helped me fill in the form. It made an immense difference.
I thought this was basically the last step in our search, but discovered I have to get three official stamps on the paper from three different authorities in different parts of Moscow, all with their different opening hours. One is a police station near me that has to testify that 22 Herzen Street is not an official monument. Everyone knows it is not an official monument, but they have to certify it, probably at some cost to Amnesty. The next thing will be that I have to find a dragon’s tooth.
Off I set for the first stop: my favourite place – the Bureau of Technical Administration. I met a nice man who was trying to register his firm and we stood in the doorway for fifteen minutes until six women had finished discussing their office dinner. When I was finally seen, it turned out I had filled in one of the boxes meant for them – correctly, but in my writing, not theirs. Two of them discussed what to do and decided I would have to come back another day with a new form. I said I couldn’t do that, and so they told me to come back next week. I said it was urgent, and they began a shouted conversation between two rooms: “Oh, it’s urgent… everyone’s living at top speed.” (!!) Everyone might be trying to live at top speed… I reckon this is what’s happened to the milk supplies – someone filled the form out wrong.
My day had a very interesting end. I went to visit Nina Petrovna Lisovskaya, a woman I’ve spoken to on the phone for six months, but never met. She has been trying to rescue a computer from customs for an ex-prisoner, so far without success. She’s seventy-four, the first single woman I’ve met, and very dry. After I’d been there five minutes, she told me to say thank you at the end of the evening and not at every step. She was a biochemist until she retired, and has tried her hand at journalism, but said that as someone brought up in the Stalin era, she finds she does not have a personal opinion – an inner censor is always at work. I hope I see more of her.